This reminds me of the Kim Dotcom saga where US attorneys accused Mega of copyright infringement when he was living in New Zealand and his company, Mega, was based in Hong Kong. Dotcom had never stepped foot in the US but somehow that was enough grounds to extradite him and force him to comply with local laws. There are plenty of examples of judicial overreach in all parts of the world. The US is no exception.
Hong Kong and New Zealand are Berne Convention countries so that would be the grounds for extradition. I don’t remember other countries signing up to enforce Ofcom’s laws.
I don't see any evidence Ofcom is currently asking anyone else to enforce their laws. As far as I can they're currently simply taking the steps they can themselves to enforce their laws - i.e. as far as people in the US go sending letters.
Letters that put them in a position to levy fines and maybe arrest people in the future should they have the opportunity to, for example if the relevant people travel or have assets in the UK in the future. Or if at some point in the future some country does sign up to enforce Ofcom's laws here and relevant people travel to that country. The US is presumably barred (short of a constitutional amendment) from making such an agreement under the first amendment, but other countries are likely not barred.
Just because a government doesn't currently have the power to arrest you doesn't mean they can't internally begin processes to arrest you if/when they get that ability, or that they can't communicate to you that they are doing that. In fact governments of all sorts (including the US) do exactly that against people they can't arrest all the time.
> I don't see any evidence Ofcom is currently asking anyone else to enforce their laws. As far as I can they're currently simply taking the steps they can themselves to enforce their laws - i.e. as far as people in the US go sending letters.
It is even more nuanced than that: whilst Ofcom absolutely has legal enforcement powers under UK law – but they are regulatory / civil powers, not criminal powers like the police.
Therefore, it probably can even be argued (by deduction as I do not have a degree in law) that particularly in the cross-jurisdictional scenario, Ofcom’s whining about the non-compliance of a website with UK law is null and void.
> Therefore, it probably can even be argued (by deduction as I do not have a degree in law) that particularly in the cross-jurisdictional scenario, Ofcom’s whining about the non-compliance of a website with UK law is null and void.
I see absolutely no argument for this. The UKs regulations here that Ofcom is the enforcement agency for are explicitly extra-territorial in nature. That doesn't mean that Ofcom can successfully get other countries to help them enforce their laws (or can invade other countries to enforce them themselves) but they clearly have the power to act within the UK to enforce their laws against people in other jurisdictions. For instance to levy fines that will be on the books should those people come to the UK in the future.
I wonder whether the regulatory / civil vs criminal distinction plays a role here.
It is plausible to assume that, at any given time, a random person from the juridisction A is in breach of compliance of jurisdiction B – knowingly or unknowingly to them. Jurisdiction B granting itself extra-territorial regulatory / civil (not criminal) enforcement powers puts the nationals of the entire jurisdiction A into non-compliance and subject to fines or arrests at the cross-border point. It is, of course, perfectly legally possible, yet surreal.
Curiously, what the UK is attempting in this instance closely mirrors the approach adopted by the CCP with the National Security Law in Hong Kong, wherein they asserted their own authority to indict any individual, of any nationality, residing in any jurisdiction, for alleged breaches of the Hong Kong NSL.
Whilst it is abundantly clear that the primary focus is Hong Kong pro-democracy activists holding multiple citizenships, they have also stated – with calculated lack of emphasis – that non-Hong Kong persons may likewise be targeted.
> Prompt and voluntary cooperation with law enforcement on child safety issues, including UK law enforcement, is what really matters for children’s safety online. That work happens quietly and non-publicly with officials who are tasked with performing it, namely, the police. My client will not be working with you on that important work because your agency is a censorship agency, not a law enforcement agency. Ofcom lacks the competence and the jurisdiction to do the work that actually matters in this space.
I think that is a bit of a stretch. Ofcom is the telecommunications regulator. They are responsible for censorship, but to be a censorship agency it would have to be your primary role. Starting a blog like this, suggests everything below is going to be a bit OTT. Instead of censorship we have propaganda.
Ofcom license amateur radio, but spend no time censoring it that I know of. Last week they fined Virgin media for making a hash of converting vulnerable people from analogue to digital phone lines, without regards to their telehealth monitoring systems. That sort of mundane thing is Ofcoms raison d'etre
Calling these letters toothless is missing the point. Ofcom doesn’t expect 4chan to comply. They are creating a paper trail to justify the next step of forcing UK ISPs to block the content at a network level.
This whole bill is about increasing government control. Now the civil servants get to geoblock our internet. Something they've been desperate to do. I feel it's part of a wider pattern along with the police deciding recently that the law allows them to police social media like the stasi. Not a new law, just a creative interpretation of one that has been around for a while. Then you have that horrible idea with mandatory digital id. I'm not sure what exactly is going on because we are still a democracy. I think it's just a lot of people living in an ivory tower.
It's not about child safety at all. If anything our government has shown time and again that that is simply not a priority for them.
> Then you have that horrible idea with mandatory digital id.
As the plan stands, the only case where it would be mandatory is for employment. The extension to right to rent is under consultation. I strongly recommend reading more on the Digital ID framework - it isn't as the press and influencers have led most people imagine. For instance there isn't a single id, there's no central database and government's role is only as a passive reference and legislator. I was opposed to the idea when I first heard about it, but won over by its sensible structure, which will actually strengthen citizens.
ofcom is "fun". been working on implementation UK Telecommunications Security
Code of Practice that been managed by ofcom. There are some very undefined controls with rather vague examples (that say "for example" and "not exhaustive list"). I tried to get from them clarification about how it should be applied, as controls/examples not clear. they wrote me back that I should simply look at example as they explain everything
If you needed to ask the permission of every apparatchik in the world before you said anything online, you wouldn't even be allowed to say "no comment". Glad someone is fighting this and doing so publicly. And the GRANITE act looks interesting: https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/10/18/the-granite-act-how-cong...
Ofcom is effectively humiliating the United Kingdom (further) to the world by doing this. There's nothing more pathetic that demanding somebody do something under threat and them just shrugging it off.
They’re doing what the previous government, who brought in this daft law, and the current government, who supported it legally require them to do.
They know it’s stupid, but it’s not Ofcom, it’s the politicians.
Spot on. The letter is a prime example of a boilerplate process that Ofcom have developed to meet the requirements of the law as it currently stands. By now I expect they have no illusions about 4Chan's likelihood of complying. I wonder how long they will carry on sending similar letters and giving Preston Byrne an opportunity to have another laugh.
Are you sure about that? There must be many targets within the UK where their threats have teeth. Why go after an American business instead of first acting within the UK?
It's about getting a clear statement form the US government that this can be ignored at no risk to them aiding in enforcement.
I.e. peace of mind. Not just for the large~ish (questionable in various ways, as the lawyer points out himself) sites currently under fire, but for all the minor ones that simply don't have the resources to comply with every country.
(I haven't read today's article) in a previous blog post, they did mention that geo-blocking the UK was not enough for ofcom to stop the harassment.
So having a clear statement, and potentially using that as angle to accuse Ofcom of harassment should they not stop, would be quite welcome.
While the US has a great track record with protecting their own citizen against legal threats from the outside (maybe a bit too much at times), I'd love the same to be done in the EU, since I'm a lot more doubtful about our relations with the UK in such aspects.
More than that if his clients ever do end up in the UK for whatever reason his letters sent on their behalf to the UK government are going to be prime evidence that the violation of the law was wilful.
Meanwhile if his clients remain beyond the UKs reach sending these letters achieves nothing of value.
There's no world where this response convinces Ofcom to stop doing their job at enforcing (to the best of their ability) the UKs laws.
He is just hurting his own clients by sending letters back to them.
You don’t need to loudly and publicly say no to Roskomnadzor’s extrajudicial notices, by recognising them you’re giving them more legitimacy than they deserve by acknowledging at all rather than treating the notice as the spam it is.
Just because the UK is modelling themselves in the same image doesn’t mean that the tactic for dealing with extrajudicial censorship attempts is different.
The Granite act is a direct result of this loud response. Being loud means that U.S. politicians notice, a U.S. under secratary notices, which means a stronger and more legally binding response is possible. Legislature and foreign diplomacy is involved not just some idealistic whining about jurisdiction.
Exactly, this is reaching the level where the US government needs to exert diplomatic and economic pressure on the UK to cease. Raising the profile of the issue will help make that happen.
I mean I don't particularly agree but I can understand the sentiment.
That's not what I'm saying just harms his clients though. There's obvious (almost entirely domestic, probably counter productive as to UK politics) lobbying value in that. It's the part where he sends confessions back to the UK regulators privately that just harms his clients.
The high-profile, public, Arkell vs. Pressdram type response increases public awareness.
Without that, he’s just a guy with a blog, and can’t effect any real change. Whether it harms or benefits his clients or not is likely a question of politics. If these responses drum up enough attention that his GRANITE act gets passed, that’s arguably a better outcome for each client jointly and severally than just ignoring the letters.
I, without proof, think that ofcom will file these letters as "second best outcome" (from their perspective).
Of course it would have been "best" (again for ofcom) if 4chan had just complied but I don't think they ever expected that.
With these meaningless letters (for the reasons you state) the agency can later go to law makers and ask for more domestic enforcement power because clearly "it's not working".
If by chance one of the 4chan people stumbles about that personally they'd consider that as a bonus.
The U.K. has descended into madness. The legalities of this don't even really matter, it's disappointing that there is any support for this sort of thing in the first place.
...or taking them to somewhere where you are legitimately going to use them for a legal purpose, or taking them back from there, or, indeed, doing anything else with them for which there is a legal justification. Provided the knife is securely packaged (in a toolbox, for example) and not available for use as a weapon, it's all good.
Note that all this refers to big knives, not pocket knives with short blades, which are still completely legal to carry on you without needing any justification.
Seems very reasonable to me. As a result, contrary to the myths, and in spite of guns not being available for attacks, we actually have a fairly low rate of actual knife murder; slightly less than that of the US, I believe.
This reminds me of the Kim Dotcom saga where US attorneys accused Mega of copyright infringement when he was living in New Zealand and his company, Mega, was based in Hong Kong. Dotcom had never stepped foot in the US but somehow that was enough grounds to extradite him and force him to comply with local laws. There are plenty of examples of judicial overreach in all parts of the world. The US is no exception.
Hong Kong and New Zealand are Berne Convention countries so that would be the grounds for extradition. I don’t remember other countries signing up to enforce Ofcom’s laws.
I don't see any evidence Ofcom is currently asking anyone else to enforce their laws. As far as I can they're currently simply taking the steps they can themselves to enforce their laws - i.e. as far as people in the US go sending letters.
Letters that put them in a position to levy fines and maybe arrest people in the future should they have the opportunity to, for example if the relevant people travel or have assets in the UK in the future. Or if at some point in the future some country does sign up to enforce Ofcom's laws here and relevant people travel to that country. The US is presumably barred (short of a constitutional amendment) from making such an agreement under the first amendment, but other countries are likely not barred.
Just because a government doesn't currently have the power to arrest you doesn't mean they can't internally begin processes to arrest you if/when they get that ability, or that they can't communicate to you that they are doing that. In fact governments of all sorts (including the US) do exactly that against people they can't arrest all the time.
> I don't see any evidence Ofcom is currently asking anyone else to enforce their laws. As far as I can they're currently simply taking the steps they can themselves to enforce their laws - i.e. as far as people in the US go sending letters.
It is even more nuanced than that: whilst Ofcom absolutely has legal enforcement powers under UK law – but they are regulatory / civil powers, not criminal powers like the police.
Therefore, it probably can even be argued (by deduction as I do not have a degree in law) that particularly in the cross-jurisdictional scenario, Ofcom’s whining about the non-compliance of a website with UK law is null and void.
> Therefore, it probably can even be argued (by deduction as I do not have a degree in law) that particularly in the cross-jurisdictional scenario, Ofcom’s whining about the non-compliance of a website with UK law is null and void.
I see absolutely no argument for this. The UKs regulations here that Ofcom is the enforcement agency for are explicitly extra-territorial in nature. That doesn't mean that Ofcom can successfully get other countries to help them enforce their laws (or can invade other countries to enforce them themselves) but they clearly have the power to act within the UK to enforce their laws against people in other jurisdictions. For instance to levy fines that will be on the books should those people come to the UK in the future.
I wonder whether the regulatory / civil vs criminal distinction plays a role here.
It is plausible to assume that, at any given time, a random person from the juridisction A is in breach of compliance of jurisdiction B – knowingly or unknowingly to them. Jurisdiction B granting itself extra-territorial regulatory / civil (not criminal) enforcement powers puts the nationals of the entire jurisdiction A into non-compliance and subject to fines or arrests at the cross-border point. It is, of course, perfectly legally possible, yet surreal.
Curiously, what the UK is attempting in this instance closely mirrors the approach adopted by the CCP with the National Security Law in Hong Kong, wherein they asserted their own authority to indict any individual, of any nationality, residing in any jurisdiction, for alleged breaches of the Hong Kong NSL.
Whilst it is abundantly clear that the primary focus is Hong Kong pro-democracy activists holding multiple citizenships, they have also stated – with calculated lack of emphasis – that non-Hong Kong persons may likewise be targeted.
Servers and customers were in USA
> Prompt and voluntary cooperation with law enforcement on child safety issues, including UK law enforcement, is what really matters for children’s safety online. That work happens quietly and non-publicly with officials who are tasked with performing it, namely, the police. My client will not be working with you on that important work because your agency is a censorship agency, not a law enforcement agency. Ofcom lacks the competence and the jurisdiction to do the work that actually matters in this space.
Well said
> UK’s censorship agency, Ofcom
I think that is a bit of a stretch. Ofcom is the telecommunications regulator. They are responsible for censorship, but to be a censorship agency it would have to be your primary role. Starting a blog like this, suggests everything below is going to be a bit OTT. Instead of censorship we have propaganda.
Ofcom license amateur radio, but spend no time censoring it that I know of. Last week they fined Virgin media for making a hash of converting vulnerable people from analogue to digital phone lines, without regards to their telehealth monitoring systems. That sort of mundane thing is Ofcoms raison d'etre
The purpose of an entity is what it does, not what its mission statement says it should be doing.
Nice soundbite, but no, the purpose of (for instance) the Royal Mail isn't to funnel postmasters to jail.
You're missing the point. Is it better to call a thing by what it does, or what it (giving the benefit of the doubt here) claims to do?
Calling these letters toothless is missing the point. Ofcom doesn’t expect 4chan to comply. They are creating a paper trail to justify the next step of forcing UK ISPs to block the content at a network level.
This whole bill is about increasing government control. Now the civil servants get to geoblock our internet. Something they've been desperate to do. I feel it's part of a wider pattern along with the police deciding recently that the law allows them to police social media like the stasi. Not a new law, just a creative interpretation of one that has been around for a while. Then you have that horrible idea with mandatory digital id. I'm not sure what exactly is going on because we are still a democracy. I think it's just a lot of people living in an ivory tower.
It's not about child safety at all. If anything our government has shown time and again that that is simply not a priority for them.
> Then you have that horrible idea with mandatory digital id.
As the plan stands, the only case where it would be mandatory is for employment. The extension to right to rent is under consultation. I strongly recommend reading more on the Digital ID framework - it isn't as the press and influencers have led most people imagine. For instance there isn't a single id, there's no central database and government's role is only as a passive reference and legislator. I was opposed to the idea when I first heard about it, but won over by its sensible structure, which will actually strengthen citizens.
https://enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk/2025/06/26/shari...
https://enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk/
ofcom is "fun". been working on implementation UK Telecommunications Security Code of Practice that been managed by ofcom. There are some very undefined controls with rather vague examples (that say "for example" and "not exhaustive list"). I tried to get from them clarification about how it should be applied, as controls/examples not clear. they wrote me back that I should simply look at example as they explain everything
If you needed to ask the permission of every apparatchik in the world before you said anything online, you wouldn't even be allowed to say "no comment". Glad someone is fighting this and doing so publicly. And the GRANITE act looks interesting: https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/10/18/the-granite-act-how-cong...
Ofcom is effectively humiliating the United Kingdom (further) to the world by doing this. There's nothing more pathetic that demanding somebody do something under threat and them just shrugging it off.
They’re doing what the previous government, who brought in this daft law, and the current government, who supported it legally require them to do. They know it’s stupid, but it’s not Ofcom, it’s the politicians.
Spot on. The letter is a prime example of a boilerplate process that Ofcom have developed to meet the requirements of the law as it currently stands. By now I expect they have no illusions about 4Chan's likelihood of complying. I wonder how long they will carry on sending similar letters and giving Preston Byrne an opportunity to have another laugh.
Are you sure about that? There must be many targets within the UK where their threats have teeth. Why go after an American business instead of first acting within the UK?
Seems like a lot of needless drama. What real legal threat did they pose that warranted a federal suit in the US against Ofcom?
Just ignore Ofcom?
It's about getting a clear statement form the US government that this can be ignored at no risk to them aiding in enforcement.
I.e. peace of mind. Not just for the large~ish (questionable in various ways, as the lawyer points out himself) sites currently under fire, but for all the minor ones that simply don't have the resources to comply with every country.
(I haven't read today's article) in a previous blog post, they did mention that geo-blocking the UK was not enough for ofcom to stop the harassment. So having a clear statement, and potentially using that as angle to accuse Ofcom of harassment should they not stop, would be quite welcome.
While the US has a great track record with protecting their own citizen against legal threats from the outside (maybe a bit too much at times), I'd love the same to be done in the EU, since I'm a lot more doubtful about our relations with the UK in such aspects.
More than that if his clients ever do end up in the UK for whatever reason his letters sent on their behalf to the UK government are going to be prime evidence that the violation of the law was wilful.
Meanwhile if his clients remain beyond the UKs reach sending these letters achieves nothing of value.
There's no world where this response convinces Ofcom to stop doing their job at enforcing (to the best of their ability) the UKs laws.
He is just hurting his own clients by sending letters back to them.
I think it’s great that someone is loudly and publicly saying no to them.
You don’t need to loudly and publicly say no to Roskomnadzor’s extrajudicial notices, by recognising them you’re giving them more legitimacy than they deserve by acknowledging at all rather than treating the notice as the spam it is.
Just because the UK is modelling themselves in the same image doesn’t mean that the tactic for dealing with extrajudicial censorship attempts is different.
The Granite act is a direct result of this loud response. Being loud means that U.S. politicians notice, a U.S. under secratary notices, which means a stronger and more legally binding response is possible. Legislature and foreign diplomacy is involved not just some idealistic whining about jurisdiction.
https://x.com/prestonjbyrne/status/1996398535189860688
Exactly, this is reaching the level where the US government needs to exert diplomatic and economic pressure on the UK to cease. Raising the profile of the issue will help make that happen.
I mean I don't particularly agree but I can understand the sentiment.
That's not what I'm saying just harms his clients though. There's obvious (almost entirely domestic, probably counter productive as to UK politics) lobbying value in that. It's the part where he sends confessions back to the UK regulators privately that just harms his clients.
The high-profile, public, Arkell vs. Pressdram type response increases public awareness.
Without that, he’s just a guy with a blog, and can’t effect any real change. Whether it harms or benefits his clients or not is likely a question of politics. If these responses drum up enough attention that his GRANITE act gets passed, that’s arguably a better outcome for each client jointly and severally than just ignoring the letters.
I, without proof, think that ofcom will file these letters as "second best outcome" (from their perspective).
Of course it would have been "best" (again for ofcom) if 4chan had just complied but I don't think they ever expected that.
With these meaningless letters (for the reasons you state) the agency can later go to law makers and ask for more domestic enforcement power because clearly "it's not working".
If by chance one of the 4chan people stumbles about that personally they'd consider that as a bonus.
The U.K. has descended into madness. The legalities of this don't even really matter, it's disappointing that there is any support for this sort of thing in the first place.
This is basically how the UK always was. You also can't legally carry knives in public unless you're moving house or coming home from the knife store.
...or taking them to somewhere where you are legitimately going to use them for a legal purpose, or taking them back from there, or, indeed, doing anything else with them for which there is a legal justification. Provided the knife is securely packaged (in a toolbox, for example) and not available for use as a weapon, it's all good.
Note that all this refers to big knives, not pocket knives with short blades, which are still completely legal to carry on you without needing any justification.
Seems very reasonable to me. As a result, contrary to the myths, and in spite of guns not being available for attacks, we actually have a fairly low rate of actual knife murder; slightly less than that of the US, I believe.